sydney film fest finale

after the last piece of red carpet was rolled back up, the barn doors closed on lights as they were "struck" back down & hollywood tape had long since become unstuck, this is where the organisers, the journos, volunteers, and the people who made the sydney film festival happen, congregated to toast the success of the fest & well, get well toasted. some people were so exhausted, sentence formulation was a near impossible task [until the next wave hit]. hello josh.

this is what went down:

winner -- official competition award: bronson

winner -- documentary prize: a good man AND contact

[kudos to foxtel for coming up with the extra 10K to support a joint win and giving "real" documentary a go]

...or at least that's what i gathered in the gatecrashed pub as we all threw our wildly rampant opinions into the film critique pool. it all eventually rose to an unintelligble milieu but whilst our inner film wankers ran amok we all splashed about & had some fatigued fun.

there were some exemplary pieces of cinema to be enjoyed at this fest & some just had to be enjoyed vicariously through the experiences of others [sometimes real life just gets in the way of one's programme wishlist].

anything else was lost in the garble of the incessant exploitation of the drinks tab [nice pouring criterion]. what's not to love about free alcohol in an inner city 24 hour bar? alcohol does enrich the story telling experience just that little bit more.

for the complete wrap on this i'd strongly advise checking out tomorrow's new worse addictions podcast.

wanda-lust

robert bresson could have directed this film. it's so beautiful in so many ways. but he didn't. barbara loden did. in addition she wrote and starred in this film which makes this piece of enigmatic cinéma vérité even more outstanding on even more levels than it already is. sadly it's the only feature film she ever made. she died before she was able to make another. the world may well have been a different place if she'd continued with her skilful yet harshly poetic socio-political commentary.

not only is loden her own imperfect "model" portraying her protagonist, wanda, in a pseudo stream of consciousness documentative stylisation: wanda is the all knowing victim. wanda as a pre-feminist construct with shades of wim wender's jane henderson [nastassja kinski] who abandons her family to reshape her life & identity in a peep show in paris texas 15 years later.

wanda as willing vessel. wanda casually prostituting herself for a bed to sleep in, trading the only commodity she has, herself, in order to keep on moving, feeling, no matter how fuzzily. it's her own life to feel whatever whilst ironically falling into replicated relationship patterns she seeks to escape john cassavetes style... wanda as realistic anti-hero.

wanda is self-described as "being no good, the children are better off with him [her deserted husband]." her market value is limited for the era because she is arguably a bad wife and mother, the pre-feminist defining roles of womanhood. her husband in court complains that she drinks. smokes and lounges about all day without tending to dirty diapers & domestic duties. she turns up to court. late. smoking. nonchalant.

wanda is the precursor to ridley scott's thelma as she drifts embracing with reluctance submission a road trip to her compounded undoing but continues on because she's committed for the overshadowed ride. her constant is surrendered motion. her own peculiar brand of freedom. her choices are few. the bronte sisters commiserated these same issues without the benefit of 16mm film centuries earlier [wanda was shot on 16mm but later blow up to 35mm for art house showings... the imagery is very pretty as well as being an experimental faux-documentative masterpiece]. an unmarried woman with no means or dowry has little future to look forward to.

ironically loden's much overlooked masterpiece was released in 1970, the same year that germaine greer's female eunuch was first published. polarized stylistically they both still address the defining effect of social values which determine the culture which shapes womanhood and sexual roles & values in society. unconscious ideas of gender are stamped by passages of time.

wanda has a much earlier feel in terms of cultural values but as i watched completely captivated by the beautiful imagery and ideological satirical commentary there was such a disturbing familiarity which increasingly grew... although the world superficially appeared to be abstract and distant it was like entertaining view of god and watching my mother [b. 1951] act under the abusive values that housewives were indoctrinated with as a post war hangover.

the trickledown effect took a little while to distribute free love especially in wanda's pennsylvania and my mother's lyttleton, new zealand. the distance became uncomfortably less. fact transcended fiction. the mothers' daughters' inheritance lives on.

by virtue of the handheld long shots and intimacy with the camera where wanda's opening trek across the open cut coal mine mounds to procure cash from one of many random men who she sees as providers the scene embodies something as intimate as holly golightly going to the powder room but this time the prostitution is matter-of-fact unglamorous and there's no need to see a close-up physical coupling to understand wanda's subservience and abject slavery to the men throughout her journey by her own volition. neither of the players, wanda or the man who gives her money is close. in fact he encourages her to go get more money off someone else. the knowledge of her identity as collective chattel is implicit. the story of O, with less visible XXX's.

on a constant cycle of abandonment as she drinks and smokes her way through men/rides she finally lands one with some stickability, mr dennis. man as protector/provider no matter how unsuitable or undesirable. or unwilling. once warmed to the role and understanding the benefits of the odd coupling he exploits mercilessly the sexual political power which is beautifully portrayed by such gems as his unnegotiable directions to wanda: "i thought i told you to get a dress.... get in the back of the car and put it on... no slacks when you're with me, no questions, when you're with me no questions, and no hair curlers -- it makes you look cheap." and so she does, without hesitation or question...

wanda will not be burning her bra but her slacks are donated to the goodwill charity bin [by mr dennis]. he doesn't even refer to her by her name nor share his "i don't like nosy people, i don't like friendly people, don't tell me your name.." yet he steals her wallet, sucks up her identity and uses it when he acknowledges his dependency & needs to coax her to cooperate in the doomed bank heist which wanda will always assume culpability for despite the fact she is not responsible for the failure of anyone else. his much sought approval which she receives post bank manager hijack: "you did good. you're really something." is the only time he allows her to trangress from her sub-humanity.

her worthlessness will always be compounded by his and the other men's need to constantly step on her and maintain her surrender with the ongoing perception of her own inferiority. thus her role and theirs is secured. mr dennis says to her: you don't have anything, you don't want anything, you're not even worthy of being a citizen of the united states..." just like roman times with the sub class system. a woman's lot it would seem didn't alter much from early referential literature until germaine greer, adrienne rich and a bunch of middle class urban women of the haight park generation set their underwear on fire...

this film has been practically dead and buried for the last 40 years. thank you to my perceptive friend josh who convinced me that i needed to see it, the subject of his thesis in film theory, at sydney film festival. so far it's the only film i felt compelled to give five stars to and there have been some incredible films. i can't wait to read his dissertation once it's done because there's so much to say about the wonder of this wandering wanda and he will undoubtedly do it so much more succinctly yet expansively than i can here and now.

spectoracular spectoracular!

the agony and the ecstasy of phil spector is how i chose to begin my sydney film festival journey this year & there couldn've been a more perfect metaphor for what became an opening night of masochistic pleasure & pain [no i didn't go see ken loach's looking for eric, but then unlike my friend gracie, i don't particularly like football, or upstanding british comedic cinema no matter how allegedly gritty it is].

no, the rollercoaster ride was all self-induced, fuelled by the fabulous imagery of phil spector's hair [sometimes in pieces], aeon traversing pop culture anthems [to know, know know him, is to love, love, love him] and dapper suits, the turmoil of genius, catherine breillat's seductive shepherdlike but somewhat schlocky reimagining of a fairytale [la barbe bleue/bluebeard] and all that complimentary champagne at the after party, dancing to prince with kate whilst dermot planned murder in the cloakroom, oh and boys. so call me venus in furs, sit back and listen.

the evening cinematic highlight for me was undeniably hijacked by the spectre which is the phenomena of phil spector.

vikram jayanti's portrayal was simplistic but an outstanding piece of filmwork utilising the soundtracks [all produced by spector] that multiple generations have grown up & lived to. if you can go in to a film with a polarized perspective & come out with another or a massive question mark dangling, that is a powerful execution of the artform of documentary in my book. it doesn't matter what the question is. the answer according to spector is him [and i'm inclined to agree].

in a relaxed interview style a very self-aware spector pokes tongue-in-cheek fun at his peers [tony bennet's cocaine addiction, woody allen's relationship with soon-yi, brian wilson's inability to ever crack the be my baby hit formula] and candidly illustrates the impact he single-handedly has made on popular culture referencing his resistant wave-through [at john lennon's encouragement] of the unauthorised use of be my baby in mean streets [martin scorcese's breakout feature] would have been kill-switched at the 13th hour & with that potentially a whole bunch of spotlit careers including scorsese and de niro.

this is the kind of russian roulette mentality which has haunted & uplifted spector to hedonistic heights and lows throughout his blissfully tortured life. his surgically enhanced cabbage patch baby face reveals toupé framed eyes which proclaim arcane knowledge of the double-edged sword of methodic madness akin to the genius of da vinci, michaelangelo and galileo. these are his alluded to peers. he dared to be different and succeeded, wearing his school graduation motto like a nazi-enforced star of david armband, with tremendous pride.

this brilliance is what pushes edges and boundaries, which traverse the fine line between madness and sanity, death and life, a self alchemized gun in the hand... or mouth.

there can be no balance, for it represents mediocrity and with that there would be no songs: no let it be, no imagine, no rockin roll high school, no you've lost that lovin feeling, no da doo ron ron, no he's a rebel, no be my baby, no then he kissed me, no to know him is to love him, no rose of spanish harlem, and maybe the last forty years woud have been completely different. lennon attributes him as being the man who kept rock n roll alive while elvis was at war. spector unashamedly thinks so. pain, turmoil and jagged edges are a vital constant with the artistic condition of genius: yes phil spector is guilty. i wouldn't want him to be innocent.

and then...

my punk monkish peers who i also think of as running amok genii led me onto the back of a bus in their infinite adventurous wisdom and we hightailed it to dendy opera quays to meet more friends and soak up the tapestried french femme telling of a fable which allegedly demonstrates the fallen eve condition. of women and apples falling from paradise, of others with doors and dead bloodied wives...la barbe bleue. i'm obsessed with fairy tales & have been since childhood but then the early days of university political science where i picked up a few feminist studies papers and deconstructed like a woman possessed... andrea dworkin was my book bed buddy for a time.

there was too much set up involved with this french provacateur led production. whenever i'm that excited about a film it's destined for a fall. oh and how it fell for me despite the divine production design in parts which was horribly flattened by the decision to shoot digitally which just could not always do justice to the costuming and sets, excellent casting and the skilful painting of the sexual power relations are bodice-ripping material on and off screen in their implied erotic suspense. delicious...

BUT i resent being treated like a sheep and continually forced between intercut narrative commentary which initally served as an excellent device illustrating the dichotomous attraction and repulsion of a young girl to bluebeard but by the end i lost interest as i did with the overall narrative. yes, the girls are charming, but their overuse becomes increasingly annoying despite the fact we are invited to see the folk tale through their eyes. must we keep going back there? with a shotgun against our heads?

i do like the depiction of the girlish carnal sexual knowledge & the manifestation of greed and betterment of the younger sister's acute awareness of the sibling rivalry "i have to show my sister anne this dress, it was made just for me". she's a proverbial ladder-climber with her eyes firmly focussed on the ivory tower from the outset of the story.

the role reversion, oedipal manipulation and overtly subtle seduction of the gluttenous baron where the metaphor is poignantly illustrated that both girl and man are guilty of the same seventh sin. who is the monster?

the gorging feast scenes are sublime but feel stylistically forced. yes, there is ironic emptiness whilst surrounded by food but it feels unnecessarily two dimensional. whilst understanding where breillat was going with this, the overlayed edits & reused tower shots [of which spector would never approve] were alienating not so much because of the artistic decision but because it didn't go far enough and wishwashed between realism & fantasy to excess.

in a nod to renaissance art, breillat ends the film metaphorizing her reversed approach through the decapitated head of this grisly overlord of whom history tells us was a 15th century french serial killer on a plate at the hands of the cunning & resourceful virgin bride.

she escapes the same end as her predecessors but the cautionary tale fails in the sense of it's fable form in that her mapped qualities she shares with her deceased husband go unnoticed and unpunished. curiosity in this case did not kill the cat. nor should it, but her greed and gluttony wouldn't escape david fincher's john doe so easily.

and it's just as well the antagonist of se7en wasn't at the sydney film festival after party because with complimentary champagne flowing for the night um, i guess we all could have justifiably ended up with our heads in that gentileschi-esque painting. not least the eighty year old woman who pointedly told dermot that she'd "worked a cloakroom for forty years young man" whilst providing some hot etiquette tips. that's always got to be a showstopper of a party comment. god only knows what mine were.

luckily kate and i were distracted by the funky tunes and took over the dance floor at the establishment and lured the suits out to play [all whilst ky was locked out, 'forced' to drink more trademark whiskey with two boys on a date]... after ambushing various celebrity types and ruining their photos.

special thanks and mentions with standing ovation to my friend josh for his seamless implementation of OVSS. many thanks to carmel as well; all your hard work and missed engagements were worth it. the film festival opening was a huge success. you should really take the day off. i have and am still too afraid to look at the sydney morning herald today [or my NOKIA SMS sent box].

and no, you really shouldn't try any of this at home. none of it.

the 56th sydney film festival is running jun 03 - jun 14. the program is immense and jumping with incredible films. life suddenly got even more full and techno-colorful.